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All but the most seasoned Goooglytes panic when Google makes changes to their rank. Last week I was on page 6 for SERP's for "deck cleaner". Friday night I dropped to page ten and by Saturday I moved into the 12th position (page 2). Hooray right? I have been posting articles and blogs like crazy. Yesterday saw a page 5 listing. What the.. today, page 6 again. Just a few minutes ago, page 5. What is going on? Am I overdoing it with the links? My SEO guy says sometimes that happens while Google "decides" your true ranking. Needless to say, I am not real pleased with this latest development. Can anyone console me before I grab the nearest Samurai sword and commit hari kari?

I'm pretty sure your ranking can alter depending which google server you pick up each time. It's unlikely that they are all updated at exactly the same time thus showing different rankings that are noticeable when you track so frequently.

Are you checking from different IP addresses? I have a feeling Google tracks which IPs have made which searches, and may custom tailor the results... Maybe the same goes for whether you're logged on to a google service or not.

The differences you're seeing are almost certainly due to hitting different datacenters, as mentioned by Trainer Bubble.

Personalization, as mentioned by Sporkman, may also play a factor, depending on whether you're logged in to your Google account, whether you've enabled or disabled search history, whether you're doing all these searches from the same PC and whether you actually click on any of the results or just run the searches.

Of course, both those factors will also affect everyone else who's searching, too. Which means that even if you see great rankings for your page, it may not necessarily mean that anybody else on the planet sees the same thing you do.

Which sort of begs the question: if a page has a #1 position, but the only person who can see it is the site owner, does it make a sound?

I've found the best thing to do to avoid heartburn is to stop checking rankings almost entirely. I haven't checked rankings for my day job company in at least three or four months.

I do, however, check our traffic every day. As long as the traffic trends are going the way I want them to, and the search terms people are using to find our site are those we expect, I don't worry too much about what any individual datacenter might be showing for rankings.

My

--Torka

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Diane Aull - NineYards.com: Helping Businesses Do Business OnlineWhether you think you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.

These are reports generated by bots from an external company once per day. I'm not sure if the same parameters apply. Whenever I search on Google I do sign out. This is very frustrating. The rank seems to be holding. I'll keep you posted.

No the SEO company has not touched the code and that is the problem. The software from this e-commerce hosting company is horrid. If you change one letter anywhere on the page and try to save it the entire page gets scrambled and the code becomes a horrific mess. In addition, the site is hosted in Canada on servers that time out with frustrating regularity.